Like the rest of the house (some of which has been shown in previous posts), the library was designed by the architect Thomas Hopper (1776-1856) in the neo-Norman style. This particular room was inspired by the Norman architecture of the church of St Peter, Tickencote, Rutland. The library still contains a book by John Carter of 1796, Ancient Architecture of England, which illustrates the church.

The house was built for George Hay Dawkins-Pennant (1764-1840), whose wealth came from slaves, sugar and slate. As Mark has found, however, his taste in books, and that of his immediate family and descendants, was not particularly nouveau riche. It is an attractive nineteenth-century gentleman’s library, with a mixture of grand and ordinary books that reflect the family’s interest at the time.

The books reflect a number of themes that Mark characterises as: ‘power politics, and high finance; art collecting; geology; a controversial inheritance, based on slaves and slate and on money which some even at the time thought to be tainted; self-sufficiency in reading matter in a remote and mostly Welsh-speaking district.’

A little while ago we were speculating about the similarities between different panels of Chinese wallpaper, and wondering whether they might have come from the same workshop. Ming Wilson, senior curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum, has now told me that hardly anything at all is known about the workshops that made these wallpapers. So far no records about them have been identified in China. The only available documentation relates to their importation and use in Europe.

Chinese art historians are certainly interested in these wallpapers, so hopefully they will discover some sources sooner or later. But until then the best thing we can do is conserve and study the surviving examples, so that we can at least identify what they were made of and how they were made.

On that point, my colleague Andrew Bush (paper conservation adviser for the National Trust) has just told me that some of the decorative elements on these wallpapers were in fact printed onto the paper, with wooden blocks. This may account for some of the similarities between different papers. The designs would then be filled out and finished by hand.

The examples shown here are from Penrhyn Castle, Gwynedd, Wales. This extraordinary fantasy castle was built by Thomas Hopper in the 1820s and 1830s for George Hay Dawkins-Pennant, who had inherited the extensive Penrhyn estate from a cousin. He also inherited West Indian sugar plantations, and the income from those, as well as from a nearby slate quarry, allowed him to build the castle.

Hopper designed the castle in Norman style, using examples surviving elsewhere in Britain as his models. He designed the furniture and fittings in the same style, and these were combined with antiques and works of art to create a dramatic and rich ensemble.